


When Roots Tangle

by ishouldwritethatdown



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, Pre-Canon, basically Persephone & Everyone, post-epilogue, yes it's both at once
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28694565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown
Summary: As Persephone and Zagreus make up for lost time, he learns more about her past as Queen of Hades and she reflects on various visitors to the Underworld. Not many have the privilege to "visit" the realm of the dead and live to tell about it, but the ones who do certainly make an impression.
Relationships: Charon & Persephone (Hades Video Game), Hades/Persephone (Hades Video Game), Nyx & Persephone (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 59





	1. Lady Persephone

“And now just press the soil down, gently,” she said. He put his lightest touch to the earth, and Persephone chuckled. “A little firmer than that. Flowers are delicate, but gardening is brutal. You’ll see when we try to tackle the snake plants and ivy,” she looked over at the other side of the garden, crawling with life. Zagreus didn’t see why it was so much of a bad thing, for life to be so determined to hang on, but apparently the hardiest plants had encroached on the space of others. It looked fine to his eyes, but he was no gardener – not yet. And Nyx said the garden had been something to behold before Persephone left.

“I’m glad we’re doing this together,” he said, because he was, and because he thought his mother could stand to hear more often how glad he was that she was in his life. He stood, and wiggled his toes inside his gardening shoes. He’d never had to wear shoes before, and there had never been much point. But Persephone didn’t want him to hurt the grass, so Hades had Daedalus make them specially. They were strange, but he was growing accustomed.

She beamed, “I’m glad you’re enjoying it, Zagreus. Though—” she sobered slightly, “—you mustn’t feel pressured to like it on my account. The expectations of our parents can be, well… stifling.”

“I think I know that,” he smiled, and his mother closed her eyes and pursed her lips a moment. “Presiding over death all day… That might work for Father, but not for me.”

“Of course,” she said, looping their arms together and beginning to walk them around the garden. “I forget… I forget. But you know, I so desperately want not to be the kind of mother to you that mine was to me. Every day, I would learn to make more flowers. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, everything that could be grown of the soil, she had me make until I could replicate her own designs to perfection. I was sick to death of flowers before long.”

* * *

Persephone was bored.

The terror that had coursed through her as Hermes and the boatman delivered her to the Underworld (the chipper chatter he maintained throughout had heightened her anxiety, if anything) had been replaced by confusion as she was greeted by the Lady of Night on the doorstep of the House of Hades. Then there was novelty, exploring this new domain where she found herself, so different from Olympus and from the mortal realm. The euphoria of being referred to as _Lady_ Persephone, not _Little_ Persephone, or any of the other detestable nicknames she had been called by her Olympian family. There was the freedom of not having her mother peering over her shoulder, passing judgement of her every action and pressing on her every responsibility. Here she never had to grow another blasted flower again. It probably wasn’t even possible, in this realm which Helios’ rays could not touch. But after that novelty wore off, it was just the same few halls, the same view of Tartarus, the same faceless shades flitting about doing Lord Hades’ bidding. And she had nothing to do.

Hades had clearly not had any notion of what to do with her. The way he pinched the bridge of his nose from about halfway through Hermes’ explanation onwards suggested he had dismissed him out of preservation of his peace of mind, not out of having his questions sated. But he did not ask anything of Persephone but her name, and since enquiring if she found the guest bedroom comfortable enough, he had not spoken to her.

She would have liked to approach him for something to do – he seemed busy all the time, was constantly ordering his house-servants and shades about. Surely there was some task she could do within his Underworld.

“Lady Nyx, do you need any help with anything?” she asked, catching the goddess unawares as she glided through the halls. She had not the gall to ask Lord Hades personally, approaching his desk like a meagre shade, but Nyx had been kind to her. Even if Persephone was occasionally overwhelmed by the realisation that she was standing before the fathomless Night.

She blinked at her, and her robes glittered like starlight as they billowed about her. “You are a guest in the House of Hades,” she stated. “You should not trouble yourself with its affairs, Lady Persephone.”

She supposed it was probably for the best. What could she offer the Lord of the Dead or the Lady of Night? All she knew how to do was make flowers.

Shades disembarked from the boatman’s ferry, solemnly queuing up to be checked in by the ever-stressed shade on duty ( _they_ could use some help, but Persephone wouldn’t have the slightest clue where to begin identifying individual shades for check-in). The boatman leaned on his oar with both hands, tilting his head at her, and said, “Hhhhaaaagghhhhh.”

“Don’t mind me,” she told him, drawing her knees just slightly closer where she was sitting on the steps out of the Pool of Styx. When she sat in the lounge, rather insistent shades tried to foist various refreshments on her that she didn’t want. The rippling waters of the Styx were the closest thing she had to a flickering hearth-fire like Aunt Hestia’s. It wasn’t nearly as homely, but it was somewhat transfixing.

“Ghhhhhaaaaaaahhh… nnnnrrrrhhhhh,” said the boatman. His ferry was now empty, but he did not push away from the steps, as she had observed he usually did. The ferry for the dead was a busy service, after all. He continued to watch her, as if waiting for an answer.

She was doubtful as she said it, but in the absence of any other means of clarification, she asked, “Are you… asking me if I want a ride?”

“Urrraaaaaghhh.” He dipped his head in a nod. When she asked if he meant up the Styx and back, he nodded again. Not offering a one-way trip – that was good. Nowhere she could go was hidden from the sight of Olympus like the Underworld was.

She took his hand and sat down opposite him, and at last he pushed away into the caverns carved out by the rivers of the Underworld. She watched the labyrinth of Tartarus give way to the meadows of Asphodel as Styx and Phlegethon met. Asphodel looked similar to the mortal realm in its mundanity, except for the flaming river that coursed through it, separating mediocre mortals from both the glory of Elysium and the horrors of Tartarus.

“What’s your name?” she asked the boatman. She was sure Hermes had mentioned it, speaking at a thousand miles per hour, but she couldn’t call it to mind.

“Hhhhhgh,” he said, and twisting purple smoke wound out of his skeletal mouth. It arranged itself into a word before dissipating: _Charon_.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Charon. I’m Persephone.”

Charon said, “Nnnggrhh,” and she had a funny feeling he meant, _I know_.

She didn’t speak much for the rest of the boat ride – she almost planned to, but when it came to the Elysian Fields, she was rendered quite speechless. She had expected a splendour reminiscent of Olympus, but it was not that. There was no mockery of sunlight, but a blue-green bioluminescence that cast everything in a glow that was somehow at once both eerie and soothing. The cloud-like waters of Lethe tumbled down the sides of valleys, and spectral moths fluttered about. She thought at first they were butterflies, but they were fluffier, more accustomed to the dark and cold.

Charon picked up the shades who could pay on the far shore of the River Styx, and Persephone sat between the dead on their way to their afterlives. None of them were much for conversation – she heard shades in the House whisper, but they seemed practiced. These were all new shades, disoriented and confused. She expected them to return to the House, but Charon pulled the boat up to somewhere entirely new; not Tartarus, Asphodel, or Elysium. The Underworld was dark in general, compared to the light of Helios that Apollo brought across the world above’s sky, but this place was dimmer and shadowier. She felt more strongly than normal that she was underneath the earth, buried deeper than the deepest point of Lord Poseidon’s domain.

The shades were ushered into this shadowy corner of the realm, and others took their seats, apparently having been organised already. These were the ones who would be brought into the House of Hades and presented before the court for consideration. Persephone tried not to make eye contact with any of them, but her gaze fell instead to the river where thousands of spectral hands and watery wails breeched the surface.

“Thank you, Charon,” she told him, after he helped her off the ferry with one courteous hand, back in the House.

“Hhhhrrgghhh,” he tipped his hat, and the check-in shade herded a group onto his ferry, bound for various regions of the Underworld.

If there were days and nights in the Underworld, Persephone had not yet found a way to tell them apart. If she had, she might have figured out if there was a routine to when Charon had the time to offer her a ride. Despite being unsettled by the wailing river – Cocytus, she learned it was called – she felt drawn to the boatman, and hung around the Pool of Styx a bit more frequently, hoping to catch him at a quiet time of day (or night). She began to talk to him on their trips, just a little at first, and gradually more, chatting to the boatman about what she thought of the Underworld, and how it compared to Olympus. He would make occasional noises of (what she interpreted to be) sympathy or agreement, and it was an arrangement she grew quite fond of.

One day she must have been quieter than usual, because he prompted her with a “Hrrrghh?” as they passed through Asphodel, and she was brought out of her thoughts.

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m just… thinking.”

He was silent, and she was silent, and they went on sailing through eternal mediocrity for a little while.

“I want to like it here.” The words burst out of her suddenly. She hadn’t intended to say them, but once she started, she couldn’t stop. “I _should_ like it here, it’s the absolute opposite of everything on Olympus. There’s no posturing, no petty fights over mortal affections. Everything is straightforward. And no one expects anything of me, no overbearing mother to criticise all my choices. But I want… I want to see the sun. I want to see the petals bloom on a flower, and watch ants build an anthill. I want to nurture fruit until it ripens, I want to _make_ things again. But nobody here needs flowers. They won’t even grow. At least… at least with Mother, I had something to _do_. I’m no use to anyone down here.”

Charon said nothing. For a man with so little to say normally, you would not expect his silence to be so deafening, but Persephone felt the weight of it. They came to the shore of the Styx, and he began to accept passengers’ coins. She kept her eyes low, trying to restrain the tears threatening to escape from her.

“Nnggghhhhhhhh… hhrrnnn,” Charon said, and Persephone looked up. All of the passengers had boarded, but there was a little shade still standing on the shore with the rest of the ones who couldn’t pay. The child-shade was holding up their fare to the boatman – a flower, grasped tightly by the stem. The boatman did not accept bribes, did not take payment other than the obol of the dead. This had been made abundantly clear with every ride Persephone had taken with him. There was always some empty-mouthed shade begging for passage, insisting there must be some mistake.

Charon knelt down and let the child nestle the flower behind his ear, before letting them aboard.

Persephone did not think about much else for several days (or nights), but eventually she came to a decision. She was going to try and cultivate a garden.

There was a space in the East Wing of the House that was largely unused, mostly serving as an overflow area for parchmentwork that was unable to stay confined to the Administrative Chamber. But there was a small plot there that she could work – she had noticed it on her very first day in the Underworld, and been equal parts annoyed at her automatic thinking of plant-life, and thrilled at the prospect that she needn’t _do_ anything with it. She supposed herself of several weeks ago would be disappointed, but she did not care. Once she loosened up the earth, removed some of the larger stones from the dry soil, she could get to work. That first job took some doing on its own, so she had plenty of time to procure her plants. She took cuttings from Elysian specimens while Charon looked the other way, and she planted her first tree in the House of Hades.

There wasn’t really _water_ in the Underworld, just the rivers, and her tentative testing revealed it had not the properties necessary for growth. The waters of Phlegethon were predictable in their inhospitability, but she didn’t expect the Styx to be quite so acidic. It was referred to colloquially as a river of blood, but it was named for the colour alone, not the substance. The only one of the rivers that seemed at all amenable to plant life was Acheron, which by rights was not part of the Underworld at all, but a river from the mortal world that became the Styx when it flowed under the earth. She thought Charon was definitely breaking some rules by rowing them out to the Temple of Styx to collect some.

Mortals built the temple on the boundary, but none came to worship at its altars, or pray to the chthonic gods it paid tribute to. Even shades didn’t appear here, usually instead being deposited by Hermes on the bank of the Styx, further in. Persephone had asked Nyx; she said the newly-deceased found the Underworld’s guard dog too unsettling. He certainly was a sight, huge and red as the Styx, keen-eyed and vigilant. One of its heads watched Charon’s boat all the time as he rowed them close to one of the waterfalls the cascaded down into the Temple. There were some dead leaves tumbling down along with the water. She held out the urn she had brought.

“Got it,” she said when it was full, but Charon made no moves to get the boat moving again. He was staring past the dog, to the circular window above the door to the mortal realm. There was bright sunlight streaming through it.

“Hhhhhhrrrrgghhh,” he said.

“Have you ever been to the surface?”

He nodded, and on his breath smoke twisted out of his mouth to form a shape. It looked like a wheat crop.

Persephone frowned. “During harvest?” she suggested.

He shook his head, and the smoke dissipated. Some more spilled into the air, but it didn’t collect itself into a shape, and he seemed to give up trying to tell her whatever it was he had attempted to say. She puzzled on it for the remainder of the boat ride, but conjured up no explanations, and she thanked him on the steps of the Pool of Styx still none the wiser.

She kept finding herself planning expansions to her garden. There was something about growing things that excited the imagination in her. She wanted to fill the East Wing with colour, as much as her limited options would allow. The options _were_ limited – but not quite so much as she had supposed. She had to choose varieties that needed little sunlight, of course, and ideally those that didn’t mind dry soil so much. But the plants seemed eager to grow, as if they had simply been waiting for a green thumb to come along and nurture them.

Shades flitted by the entrance to her garden every now and then, pretending to pass by or search for something in the stacks of parchmentwork that still resided in the East Wing. Sometimes it was a presence more pronounced than a shade, and Persephone would look up to see the train of Nyx’s glittering robes. Mostly, she ignored the visitors and got on with her work, but once she snapped her gaze up quickly enough to see Nyx’s startled pale eyes staring back at her, before she vanished.

“There,” she said softly to a sapling as she watered it, and she imagined it sighing with relief. The soil had been dry for a couple of days (or nights?), but she had only managed to collect more water today (or tonight?). Her watering can was of her own making, fashioned out of disused kitchen implements she’d salvaged from the lounge. It wasn’t perfect, but it did the trick.

A shadow fell across her and her flowerpatch. She looked up, thinking perhaps Nyx had decided to venture over to her at last, and scrambled to her feet when she saw Hades towering over her. Even when she stood upright, he was so much taller than her. She felt as if he might accidentally crush her underfoot.

“You have planted a garden,” he stated. His voice was low and rumbling, like an earthquake.

It could hardly be described as a garden yet, she thought. It was a little plot she was slowly filling with saplings. Almost he could crush it with his two feet alone. “Yes,” she said anyway.

“The Resources Director ought to have been notified.”

“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise – I didn’t think anyone was using this space.” She should still have asked, of course. It was foolish of her to presume anything to be hers to do with as she pleased – she was so caught up in her wish to grow things again that she had forgotten all her manners. And all of her self-preservation. The god of the dead was not known for his charitable behaviour, and everyone knew what happened to people who violated xenia, especially with the gods.

He looked from the flowerpatch to her, and for a moment she glimpsed thoughtfulness in his eyes. It was obscured by his beard, and the pressure his presence created, and the fact his eyes were such a striking colour, but for an instant she was able to detect it on his face. He clarified, “The Director ought to have been notified that you intended to use this wing, and they should have been made to allocate a different area for overflow storage.”

“Oh,” she said simply.

“I will let them know,” the King said. “Good day-or-night, Lady Persephone.”

Charon didn’t attempt to communicate to her again what he had before, but she kept thinking of it. She hated to think she might have missed her chance to bond with him because of a small misunderstanding. Nyx appeared in her garden just as she was resolving to ask her for advice on understanding Charon, and she was on the verge of remarking on the perfect timing when the Lady of Night said, “Lady Persephone. Lord Hades wishes to speak with you.”

She was struck with the sudden fear that she had done something wrong. As she was escorted to the Great Hall, shades keeping close to the walls and whispering as they passed, she made a hurried request for advice from Nyx.

“Speak as plainly as you are able,” she recommended in hushed tones, before peeling off to her favoured corner of the East Wing and leaving Persephone in front of the Lord of the Dead’s desk. Cerberus was sitting at his right-hand side, as tall as Hades himself, but the King’s presence almost drowned out the dog’s with its intensity. She felt she would be relegated to a region of the Underworld with a flick of his wrist at any moment.

“Lady Persephone,” Hades greeted, in his rumbling tones. “I trust your stay in the House of Hades thus far has been to your liking.”

It was a formality, but just as she was stumbling over the appropriate reply, a jittery-looking shade approached Hades’ left-hand side and began to mumble something that Persephone couldn’t hear.

“Can’t you see I’m busy?” the King asked irritably. They redoubled their feverish murmuring, distress sweating off them, and Lord Hades sighed to Persephone, “Excuse me a moment.”

With the pressure of his gaze temporarily transferred to the anxious shade, Persephone had the freedom to let her own attention change. She hadn’t had a chance to see Cerberus up close until now, as Charon always kept his distance. Usually he was away from the House, on duty at the Temple, and the rest of the time he was shadowing the King, and occasionally pestering shades. The hound’s rightmost head was trained firmly on Hades and his current conversation, and the leftmost was surveying the Great Hall, encouraging all others to give a wide berth to the Lord of the Dead’s desk. The middlest head, however, was watching Persephone. It was a curious eye, rather than a wary one. She supposed she was quite different to most occupants of the House – she was neither a shade, nor a chthonic god.

The middle head bent down to lean closer to her, and his sniffing ruffled her hair. It reminded her so much of Zephyrus and the warm breezes he brought that she actually let out a laugh. Hades paused in his speaking, and looked at her out of the corner of his eye before resuming what he was saying.

Cerberus’ middle head huffed at her again and relaxed his jaw, letting his ember-glowing tongue hang out slightly between his fangs. His red fur was so fluffy-looking. She reached out to pet his snout.

“No!”

She startled, snatching her hand back to her chest. Hades was glaring, and Cerberus’ middle head flattened his ears back and whined. She stammered, “I—I’m sorry, I—”

“Not that head,” he cut her off, reaching up to the rightmost head and scratching him behind the ears. The head closed his eyes contentedly and nuzzled into his master’s hand. “This one doesn’t like it when you pet his other heads. You’re liable to get a bite taken out of you if you try.”

The middle head, who doubtless had known this, looked guilty. Hades guided the affection-hoarding head down closer to the floor so that Persephone could reach. She stroked his snout, and he made a gentle _ruff_ sound that gave her another Zephyr-like gust. The smell was more like sulphur than a breeze through a field of wildflowers was, but she didn’t mind it. His fur was as soft as it looked.

“Now, then,” Hades said. All three of Cerberus’ heads stood vigilant once more. “Back to business. Should you need anything for your garden, speak to the House Contractor. They can organise shades to do any work which you would struggle to complete alone.” He was moving papers around his desk in an organised manner that made her imagine he was filing his very thoughts. “Furthermore, please remember to complete this form of your hours so that your work may be adequately accounted for and rewarded.”

“Lord Hades, I don’t want to be your gardener.”

He paused. “You do not?”

“No,” she said, cheeks heating as they caught up with her impertinence. She had been wishing for something to do in the House for almost as long as she’d been here. The Lord of the Dead himself offered her a position doing the _only thing_ she was really good at, and she turned it down? She would be lucky not to be thrown into Tartarus for all the hassle she was creating for him. Still, she had started speaking now. She would see this through. “The garden is a wonderful hobby, but with all due respect, I hoped that leaving Olympus would give me opportunities to learn… something new.”

He considered this. “I see,” he said at last. He took a length of parchment and began to write. “In that case, I will have Nyx find something suitable for you to do.”

“Thank you, Lord Hades.”

“No thanks are necessary.” She saw his brow crease as he frowned at his desk. Then he looked up. “Lady Persephone.”

She was clutched with fear again, that he had remembered something she had done wrong. She tried not to let it show in her voice. “Yes?”

He was silent several moments, staring at her at first and then letting his gaze sweep the Hall. She couldn’t see his mouth clearly for his beard, but she had the sense he was struggling to shape the words. He sighed. “Nevermind. It’s nothing. Please do let me know if I can do anything to make you more comfortable here.”

Nyx did not normally travel by boat, preferring to slip around in the shadows by herself, but when Charon arrived in the Pool of Styx to take Persephone to the site of her new job, the Lady of Night rode with her. It was the shadowy part of the realm that they docked at, and it occurred to her that it might be Nyx’s domain. “What is this place?” she asked.

“This is Erebus,” she answered. “The dead wait here to be placed within their eternal afterlife. See the gates – one for each region.”

Persephone did see the gates, now, though it was hard to parse shapes in the combination of shadows and mist. As Nyx said, there was one for Elysium, Asphodel, and Tartarus. Shades were filing into lines for each gate, guided by torch-bearing beings that must have been chthonic nymphs. They had a sort of uncanniness to them that overworld nymphs did not, but the way they took to the shape of Erebus was very nymph-like.

“What of the shades who Charon brings to the House?”

“They are mostly remarkable people, not easily sorted into any one region. Some are mortals who object to their sorting and apply for an appeal. Lord Hades rules on these special cases personally.”

“And… the ones in the river?” she said, glancing behind her at Cocytus.

“Foolish souls,” she dismissed. “They had no coin for Charon, and tried to swim. The river claimed them, and now they lament there forevermore.”

As she continued to show her around, Nyx dubbed the nymphs as Lampades, companions to Hecate. There were many other doors, but shades only lined up for the first three, and any who approached the others were turned away.

“The Underworld is vast,” Nyx explained, “but shadows stretch across it all. From here you may travel to any region of the Underworld, if the Lampades allow. Or if you have the correct key.” She produced from her sleeve a silver key, large and weighty. It was inset with something like a gem, similar to the ones that adorned Nyx’s clothing. Not quite a gem, though; there was a heart of darkness inside it, and Persephone felt like it was watching her. She shivered.

“If the gates are not used, they risk becoming warped, or tampering with them might go unnoticed. Your job will be to test the gates and verify that they function still.”

“Oh,” she said. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but inspector of doors was decidedly not what she had had in mind when she asked Hades for a job. “Doesn’t Lady Hecate maintain the gates?”

“Lady Hecate does not like to be called upon by the House. She is the goddess of in-between spaces, and belongs neither to Olympus or the Underworld. She does spend more time on this side of the divide when she chooses to manifest, but I believe this is only because Lord Hades bothers her less than the gods of Olympus would. And of the time she spends here, it is mostly in Erebus, or on the shores of the Styx. Thus, she provided the King with these keys.”

Nyx showed her how the gates worked, how to identify what region of the Underworld they led to by the decals around the outside. They were intricate, but each had a distinct identifying feature – skulls for Tartarus, asphodel perennials for Asphodel, crossed weapons for Elysium, and Hades’ sigil for the House. Nyx pointed out one that was adorned with sunflowers and mountains; the surface gate. Keys of Hecate could not open it – only the Lady herself. Persephone did not need to check this gate.

They stepped through an Asphodel gate, and emerged in the Meadows – it was the first time Persephone had put her feet down on its land, instead of simply seeing it from Charon’s boat. This was supposed to be the land of mundanity, but she gasped at the feeling of grass on the soles of her feet, and wiggled her toes, grinning. Could she get some grass for her garden, she wondered? The cold stone and hard-packed earth of the House wasn’t nearly as lovely.

“Lady Persephone,” Nyx said, reminding her of her presence, and resumed telling her how to spot and report things that might be out of place in the Underworld.

Behind Persephone’s bedroom, there was a courtyard from which Tartarus could be viewed. Watching the shifting chambers had lost some of its appeal when she found out that the light that cast back and forth across this Underworld region was Ixion, bound to a flaming wheel by Zeus and bid to spin forevermore. Whether or not he deserved the punishment was neither here nor there – watching his eternal torment was an all-too-potent reminder of just what Tartarus was for.

So she leaned on the balustrade at the opposite side of the courtyard instead. She could watch the River Styx from this vantage, although not as closely as she could when she sat by the Pool in the Great Hall. She had felt self-conscious sitting there of late. Knowing that Lord Hades paid some amount of attention to her presence in the House changed things.

She heard a whistle from below, at the gates, and looked down to see a deceptively-young-appearing god. “Hiya,” said Hermes cheerily. His winged sandals fluttered, and he rose so that he hovered face-to-face with her. He held out a small package. “Delivery for you.”

“Delivery?” she frowned. “Hermes—no one on Olympus is supposed to know I’m here.”

He looked from the package to her, and back again. “No Olympian _does_ know you’re here,” he said, sounding equally confused, and added as if it were obvious, “Compliments of the boss.”

If anything, the package became even more shrouded in mystique. “From Hades?”

He rested his chin on his hands and his elbows on the air, kicking his feet up, while she opened the parcel. Underneath the lid was a series of box-slots, each with a small drawstring bag in, labelled. Her eyes flicked between each one, and then she chose a bag and spilled a little of the contents out into her palm, just to verify that she had reached the right conclusion. _Seeds_. Hades had procured her some _seeds_.

“So how are you liking it?” Hermes asked, twirling onto his back and looking at her upside down as she carefully replaced the seeds.

“An eternity here is better than an afternoon with you,” she said reflexively. She was mostly joking, although she had been secretly glad when her mother turned the proposals of Hermes and Apollo away on her behalf; Hermes was too flighty and energetic, and she’d seen how the objects of Apollo’s affection tended to end up, however good his intentions.

He put his hand over his heart, wounded, with mock surprise painted over his face. Then he shrugged, “I’m over it.” That was the other problem with Hermes. He was too quick to move on. He said, “Soooooo?” in his most gossipy tone, and she raised an eyebrow at him. “When’s the wedding?”

She fumbled the seed box and almost dropped it in her surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s why Dad sent you down here, isn’t it?” He imitated Zeus’ voice, undercut in its rolling thunder by the fact Hermes was incapable of speaking slowly: “ _No wonder my dear brother Hades is so gloomy all alone in the Underworld. He needs a wife to keep him company!_ ” He switched back to his regular voice, “Which, between you and me, seems a little strange considering all the company he seems to prefer to the Queen’s.”

“Hermes!”

“What! They can’t smite me down here, can’t even hear me.” He rolled his eyes. “But… so Hades hasn’t formalised anything with you, then?”

“No. He’s been a perfect gentleman, treated me as a treasured guest. Which, yes, also baffles me a little,” she admitted. “You did explain to him your father’s reasoning, and yet…" She sighed. "I feel like I’ve only made trouble for him. But he’s done everything he can to make me comfortable, and hasn’t asked anything of me. Besides, Nyx is the Lady of the House. He doesn’t even need a wife.”

He hummed. “But you really like it, yeah? You’re not too homesick, or anything? Cause it can get pretty gloomy down here and I wouldn’t want you to go through all this trouble to leave Olympus only to hate it here, too.”

It was different, but different was good. She hoped. “I like it here,” she said, with a conviction she wasn’t sure she quite felt, yet.

He grinned, the patron god of liars, with his eyes too old for his face. He didn’t challenge her, didn’t offer any more unsolicited advice, just gave her a quick salute and said, “See you around, Persephone,” and was gone in a golden-winged flash.


	2. King Sisyphus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn’t figure out a way to integrate this into the story without it feeling clunky so I will explain here that since Death and Sleep incarnate had to have existed at least as long as mortals have, but Thanatos and Hypnos are Zagreus’ age - canonically, they and Megaera were all toddlers together - that they live in cycles (of life/death and sleep/waking, get it?). They age over the eons and then cycle back to being children/godlings. Nyx maayyy have nudged them into cycling (with their consent) when Zagreus was born so that she could use the excess Darkness to heal Zag and they could all be the same age growing up. Thanatos and Hypnos have regained some old memories as they’ve got older which is how Than remembers Persephone being Queen.

“But you didn’t tire of it again? Flowers, I mean,” Zagreus said. “You maintained the garden down here, and even started a new one when you left.”

“Once you have the freedom to leave something behind, you become much more open to appreciating its beauty. I made my love of flowers, of growth, into a _choice_ , and our identities always sit more comfortably when we have chosen them. You’ve been enjoying calling yourself a Prince more recently, I’ve noticed. It’s because your father told you the Fates denied him a heir, isn’t it?”

He laughed, “I don’t know if that’s about choosing aspects of my identity so much as it is delight in being contrary.”

“Well, it’s that too, in a way. I was sick of flowers because my mother told me I ought to love them. It’s a shame you haven’t been able to stay on the surface for long – you’d understand better, I think, why I’ve come to like the Underworld so much.”

***

Persephone spotted a golden obol glinting on Erebus’ shore, and picked it up, cleaning it off. She had found quite a few coins like this; mostly in Erebus, but at the steps in the House, too. She tried to ask Charon why there were so many spare coins around. He had only pointed at Cocytus – the reaching hands and endless wails. If she squinted, she thought she could see gold glittering on the riverbed. That was the answer, then, to why so many tried to swim the Styx, knowing it was futile. They weren’t as much trying to cross the river as much as they were trying to dive for treasure.

The water of the Styx lapped the shore again, and from the motion sprang a young nymph with obsidian skin and sea foam hair. “Hello,” he greeted. “You are Lady Persephone, are you not?”

“I am. And you?” She hoped she wasn’t going to get in trouble for taking the coins, but she had seen all kinds of shades combing the beaches. She wasn’t even looking for obols, she just picked them up whenever she happened across them during her duties.

“Ascalaphus,” he said. “Nyx sent me to tell you she will not be joining you today – she has some urgent business to take care of.”

“Is something wrong? Should I return to the House?”

“No. You may continue as normal. Here are the keys of Hecate. Goodbye.”

“Wait—” but he was already gone, melted back into the water. Persephone considered the keys in her hands, and attached them to her belt. As she walked through Erebus, she considered what might have happened at the House to call Nyx away so urgently. She had never had to send Persephone on her own before – but maybe that was it. Maybe it was a test, to see how she fared unsupervised. Just as she resolved to be as attentive as possible in her duties, she noticed something was off. There were much fewer shades than normal, waiting to be filed into their places in the Underworld. That was strange. The Lampades stood at their posts as normal, but there were no queues, no clusters of shades waiting for Charon.

She began to check the gates – not using them, but trying them without keys, just to make sure she had not somehow left one open, allowed shades to escape somewhere. She couldn’t imagine it would have helped them, many of the gates leading to the pit-chambers of Tartarus with no chance of escape, but people could do odd things when trapped or forced to wait. She found no hint of an exit, and the fog thickened to such a degree that she could hardly see her most recent footsteps.

She had no way to get her bearings. Nyx and probably some other chthonic gods could feel the Darkness that made up so much of the realm, get a sense of the shape of it, but she couldn’t. She was out of her depth, and she couldn’t call Nyx for help. “Ascalaphus?” she tried. Then, when he didn’t appear, she steeled herself and asked, “Hecate?”

She had not yet met Lady Hecate directly. She knew that she was around, existing in most all of the doorways and barriers in the Underworld, particularly the Temple of Styx and the rivers’ shores. But they had never been formally introduced.

It seemed that was going to remain the case, but Persephone caught sight of a lamp gleaming through the mist and headed towards it. She at least could ask a Lampade if they knew what was going on (unapproachable as these particular nymphs were). When she got close enough, though, she saw that no Lampade manned this gate, the lantern simply hanging on a hook at its side. She had never checked this gate before, but it wasn’t the surface gate, which she was forbidden from using. It seemed just like any other, if a little less well-maintained. Maintaining the gates was her job – had she been missing this one, accidentally? Why had Nyx not corrected her? She slotted a key in and stepped through the gate.

Immediately she wobbled on the edge of an unfathomable drop into mist and clouds, and took a hasty step back. Then, taking in some more of her surroundings, she felt the cool moisture of the air and the gentle way shadows seemed to envelope the space, and realised where she was. She was standing at the edge of the spring that sourced the River Lethe, cloudlike and carving a path through the cavern on its way to Elyium.

There was a continuous sound other than the river, she realised after a moment, and looked around for its origin. It sounded almost like… She blinked at the floating, sleeping form of a god, illuminated by bioluminescent mushrooms. His hair was fluffy white like the Lethe, and his quilted cape was wrapped around him like a blanket.

“Um… hello?” she said. When he continued to snore, she tried again, “Hello?”

He snorted awake, blinking rapidly. For a moment it seemed like he was about to drop right back into sleep, but then his bleary eyes took her in, and he exclaimed, “Oh! A visitor, welcome! What brings you to the Land of Dream?”

“I was just checking the doors from Erebus, and…”

“Aww, that’s nice,” he said with a smile. “Mom doesn’t usually check it, cause I’m the only one who comes here, and I don’t need the gate. I can just pop right in, hah!”

“You’re one of Nyx’s sons, then,” she guessed. There were some resemblances, though this god’s crows’ feet were more laughter lines than the dignified mark of age that Nyx had.

“Mmhmm.” He yawned, “I’m Hypnos, the god of sleep. Nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

“It’s Persephone.” She knew that most of the primordial gods, including Nyx’s children, were older than the mortals Prometheus had shaped from clay, or even some of the Titans. It should have been strange, then, the youthful energy that this god exuded in spite of his mature appearance. But somehow it was not.

“Nice name, Persephone.” With heavy eyelids, he began to nod off again.

“Erm… Lord Hypnos?”

He startled awake again, “Yes!”

“I think I’m a little lost. Should I just follow the river into Elysium?”

“Huh? Oh, I guess you could take the Lethe as a shortcut back to the House. There’s a big waterfall and you’d definitely die falling down it. Sounds painful though!”

“Um,” she said. Since she was not a chthonic god, nor a full-blooded Olympian, there were no guarantees of either her survival or the kind of death that might bring her rising from the Pool of Styx. She most assuredly did not fancy the risk. “I’ll take the less painful mode of transport, if you please.”

“Good choice,” he beamed, waving his arm and conjuring a person-sized cloud. He tested its springiness with his hand – it was soft, but firm enough to sit on. “It’ll take you down safely. And don’t worry, this one won’t make you forget anything – that is, if I’m remembering correctly!”

He helped her onto the cloud, and she decided to take his last comment as a joke. “Thank you!” she called as she floated away. He yawned as he waved her away, and wrapped his cloak around himself again. The cloud followed the river for some distance, until – true to Hypnos’ word – Lethe dropped off into an Elysian valley. The cloud began its gentle descent, and she watched the shades below. Some even waved at her.

She passed through a chasm in the cavern wall into darkness, and her eyes adjusted to the shadows of Erebus. This was her stop – but her cloud was still a ways off the ground. While she waited to get close enough to jump off, she noticed again the lack of shades waiting to be sorted. She found it hard to believe that people had simply stopped dying. Ares alone was relentless, and once his name was invoked, he revelled in causing as much death as possible. But even if the mortals had spontaneously stopped going to war, it was far from the only cause of death. Persephone remembered when she had first discovered that mortals could die from simply not eating.

She craned her neck to try and see beyond Erebus, to the shores of the Styx where shades appeared. If Charon had stopped collecting shades, that would explain the emptiness. She couldn’t make it out clearly at first, but eventually she got close enough to see individual shades – there were some, but not the hoards that would indicate a hold-up in the ferry service. They were wandering back and forth, not the anxious pacing of new shades waiting to be picked up, rather the absent drift of the coinless.

It was after realising this that she noticed she had surpassed Erebus and was now drifting over the Cocytus. Spectral hands reached towards her, and she could see the coins they’d trapped themselves for glinting on the riverbed. She was too close to the water, getting closer to it much faster than she was getting close to the shore. She wobbled to her feet and tried to think what she could do. There was nothing to hang onto. No vines draped from the cave roof, no islands made of shiny black sand. And no Charon in sight.

The bottom of her cloud started to dissolve into the water, releasing a ghostly sigh, and it struck her that she was about to fall into the Styx. She would be trapped like the other foolish shades, reaching and yearning and wailing forevermore.

There was a rustling of water, and a wave swept away the rest of her cloud. She gasped and squeezed her eyes shut, ready for the plunge, but when her back hit the water it didn’t envelop her. She was pushed towards the shore, a wave rolling under her back to push her upright, letting her stumble onto the sand. Bewildered, she turned around to see the surface of the river flattening itself once again.

“Styx?” she asked. A much smaller wave crashed against the shore, apparently in answer. The rivers were gods too – just because they didn’t take such an easily comprehensible shape didn’t mean they weren’t paying attention. “Thank you.”

Styx send another little wave, and then settled. Persephone didn’t know why she had done that, as she was known to be even more impassable than Charon toward the coinless. She had no reason to have any more favour for her than she did for any other Olympian, as far as Persephone knew. But, since she seemed to be in good company, she sat down on the bank to wait for Charon. She might even see Hermes again, if he brought more shades down to the shore. He hadn’t come by the House since he delivered the seeds from Hades, and she would never admit to missing him, but he was the only non-chthonic god she ever had a chance to see in the Underworld. He had helped her feel a little less out of place in the House.

She had been waiting for some time with no sign of either the Messenger or the ferryman, when sharp winds suddenly lashed across the Styx, and there was a tearing sound that filled the air, followed by a splash. When her eyes had stopped smarting, she saw and heard a man thrashing in the water. Running to the edge of the water, she shed her shawl and tossed one end out to him, shouting, “Over here!”

He grabbed the fabric, and he was heavy, but she was able to help him close enough to the bank that he could drag himself ashore. He gasped and shook on his hands and knees, dripping red Stygian water. She tried to wipe some of it off with her shawl, seeing it start to burn his exposed skin.

“Are you alright?” she asked on one knee, putting a hand on his shoulder. He was going luminescent and intangible at the edges – a shade, extremely recently-deceased. From what she had seen of the shades who usually faded onto the shore of the Styx for Charon to pick up, he had arrived altogether more violently than was standard.

The man sobbed. He had a large frame, but in that moment he seemed very small. “Oh, My Lady! It’s awful! My wife didn’t even give me a proper funeral, just tossed my body away!”

“How awful!” she exclaimed.

“I’ll never have my eternal rest in Elysium without an obol for the boatman,” he despaired. “What am I to do?”

She rubbed his shoulder and shushed him, in what she hoped was a comforting manner. She really didn’t have much experience with mortals, or men, or the recently deceased. She had become accustomed to ignoring the coinless on Styx’s shores, as Charon did. It was a sad lot for them; the forgotten, the forsaken, bid to wander the edge of the river in hopes of passage that they knew wouldn’t be granted. She was about to call for Charon, ask if he might make an exception as he once had for the young shade with the flower, when the man said:

“If only I could reach my brother on the surface, he could give me a coin for the ferry. Oh, Lady Hecate, won’t you grant me a passage out of this place so that I can collect my due?”

“I’m not…” she started, and finished it instead of a correction with, “…sure about that.”

“I have no body to go to because of my wife’s desecration. You can be assured, I have no desire to return to that wretched woman – I only hope that Queen Hera, that noble and just Lady of my patronage, will see her wickedness and strike her down for her dishonour. All I need is a coin for the ferry. I am most certain I can obtain one in just three days.” His dark brown eyes were pleading, with an honest softness about them.

“Three days?” she repeated. That seemed a rather long time.

“Just three, to find my brother and return,” he said.

She supposed that traversing the mortal world without divine power was quite a task. She had heard of people spending weeks journeying to temples across the land. She weighed the chthonic key in her hand. “Swear on the Styx,” she said.

He blinked, then smiled. “Of course, My Lady. I do solemnly swear that I will return in three days’ time, or drink the waters of the Styx.”

She used Hecate’s key to send him back to the mortal world, and was left on the shore. She was just contemplating sitting back down on the bank when she heard the waters of the Styx rippling, and the greeting of the boatman. “Hhhrrrnnnnnnhhh.”

He didn’t wait for any shades, and seemed to take them down the river faster than he normally did. Although he was never “chatty”, he seemed quieter than usual, too. More focused. When she asked if something had happened at the House, his response seemed affirmative, but he couldn’t clarify.

It was clear enough when they got there.

The House of Hades was in chaos. Persephone thought she had seen it busy before, but that was nothing compared to the whirlwind that was the Great Hall. It was a blur with shades, there was parchment flying, and numerous loud voices contributing to what appeared to be some sort of argument – she couldn’t make out any of the words in amongst the other commotion – at the end of the hall. She exchanged a glance with Charon as she stepped off his boat, and he made a sympathetic, “Khhhnn.”

Hades was sat behind his desk, bellowing at a black-robed figure with a scythe that she could only assume was Thanatos, who was yelling right back. Whenever he did this, Cerberus barked at him. Hermes was also there, hovering with his sandals so that he wasn’t quite so far below Hades as he would have been. He was seemingly a third party and both shouting and being shouted at periodically.

Hypnos was being repeatedly woken by the loud noise, but seemed to be struggling to keep his eyes open. He was floating in the spot that the check-in shade usually stayed, his fluffy cape sculpted into a chair. “What’s going on?” Persephone asked him.

“Oh, hey again,” he said through a yawn. “Some king met the wrath of the gods and Than was sent to go get him, but the sneaky guy trapped him and no one died for a while.”

That explained the relative emptiness of Erebus, and the lack of a line waiting to be sorted down the Great Hall. She tapped Hypnos shoulder. “What next? Why is Hermes here?”

“I’m awake!” he startled (he had not been). “Uh, Lord Ares got pissed that no one in his wars was dying, so he kind of fastballed the king at the Underworld and told Hermes to sort it out. Now no one can find him.”

Persephone had a terrible feeling.

“I’m telling you, I went up and down the shore of the Styx so many times, Sisyphus wasn’t there. I even checked the Temple of Styx, which has _way_ too many chambers if you didn’t know, and it was empty except for a few rats – you might want to deal with those by the way—”

“Ares can’t have sent a soul any further in than the Styx. You clearly didn’t check thoroughly enough,” Thanatos snapped, to which Hermes groaned and Cerberus barked.

“All of you be quiet,” Hades said. “I’m trying to think.”

His pen was scratching furiously across parchment as Persephone approached his desk. She wanted nothing more than to slink away to her chambers and pretend she knew nothing of the day (or night)’s events. But Lord Hades had been kind to her, and the least she could do was tell him the truth. “Lord Hades?”

“You will have to excuse me, Lady Persephone. I will be happy to address your concerns,” his voice began to raise to the House as a whole, “once I have the _head_ of **whoever** let King Sisyphus slip away **on a** **_spike_ in Tartarus** **_wishing_ they could trade places with _Tantalus_.**”

“It… was me.”

Silence fell upon the House of Hades. Every shade ground to a halt, parchment fluttered to the floor, and all eyes settled on her and Lord Hades. Cerberus’ middle head let out a low whine, and then the left growled and snapped at the nearest shade, and the House began to move again, a steady stream of frantic shades and minor chthonic gods.

Hades remained absolutely still with his eyes fixed on Persephone, doing no more than glance at Thanatos when he said, “Well, I’m not getting him back,” and vanished in a deathly flash.

“Boss,” Hermes said, zipping to Persephone’s side. “I—”

“You are dismissed, Hermes,” he interrupted.

“But I—”

“ _Go._ ”

Able to give her no more than an apologetic look, he vanished in a flutter of golden wings.

“Cerberus, return to your post. Hypnos, wake up and do something useful.”

Hypnos startled awake. “Y-yes, boss?”

“Your brother has a lot of catching up to do. Shades ought to be pouring into the Underworld any minute, and you shall be checking them in.”

He rubbed the sleep out of his eye. “I get to work with Than?” His tone lightened, and he said with an amount of zeal that suggested he’d never been trusted with any serious responsibilities before, “I won’t let you down, sir!”

Hades sighed and regarded Persephone again, leaning back in his throne with one elbow on his armrest and his face leaning against his fist. He was inscrutable, the meaning behind his expression hidden by his beard and his perpetually-creased brow. He stood, and the motion wasn’t sudden, but it made her flinch. “Let us speak in the garden,” he said, his voice low enough that it might have been mistaken for an earthquake.

He closed the gate behind them. It didn’t block the view from the East Wing, but everybody had got the message. No shade floated anywhere near the garden. Persephone didn’t know what she expected; was he going to raze the garden while she watched? Force her to rip up the plants? Bind her to the garden until she could harvest some kind of grapevine that would never survive in the Underworld? Or bar her from it altogether?

She didn’t expect him to sit down. She didn’t expect him to speak in a measured tone. “Tell me what happened.”

(She didn’t expect him to say that.)

She told him of how King Sisyphus had appeared in the Temple of Styx in a violent whirlwind, how he had mistaken her for Lady Hecate and begged her to let him return to the mortal realm because his wife had wronged him so. How he had led her to believe he was god-touched, and sworn on the River Styx to return after three days. It was clear now that he was not god-touched, that he was not bound by Styx-oaths the way gods were.

When he got up, his burning feet made the sparse grass under to him curl and blacken. He said, “This cannot go without reprove, Persephone.”

She nodded, hanging her head and preparing to accept her punishment. He opened the gate and motioned for her to follow him back into the Great Hall. Her cheeks burned, feeling the eyes of the shades who dared to watch. It was selfish and futile of her, but she had hoped he might keep from announcing her punishment to the entire House at once.

He settled himself behind his desk once more and began drawing up a document. “For your disruption of the Underworld, I bid you unable to leave the Underworld until you grow enough food to fill the bellies of every shade in my domain.”

It was a kinder punishment than she probably deserved – a bottomless task with shades constantly arriving in the Underworld, yes, but not a painful for pointless one. Even if the idea of being bound to the garden forevermore was disheartening, at least it didn’t contradict her immediate plans. She told herself to be grateful as she signed the parchment, and the ink burned like embers when she lifted the pen, sealing the deal.

Hades departed to file the contract in the Administration Chamber, and Persephone turned to go. She may as well return to the garden and get started.

“What a funny contract,” Hypnos mused.

She turned. “Why’s that?”

“Well, shades don’t have bellies and they mostly don’t get hungry. You could say that enough food for a shade is… no food at all!” He laughed and went back to his list, offering unsolicited advice to shades on how, if they hadn’t been mortals, they might’ve done better next time.

She didn’t dare to hope for that kind of charity. Hades could easily claim that he’d given her a bottomless task, if she could never sate the hunger of any shade. What reason would he have to be kind to her? He had never asked for her to show up at his doorstep, and in her short time here she had commandeered a section of it for herself and allowed a soul to escape the Underworld. She was a terrible guest – and Tantalus was all the evidence you needed to prove the gods did not take well to such people.

But a few days (or nights?) into her redoubled efforts in the garden, it became crowded with shades. She asked what they were doing, and one among them told her (she had to strain her ears) that they were there for the paving. At her confusion, several of the shades gestured to a collection of stone slabs that were being stacked against the wall, and they asked her in what layout she wanted the path through the garden. Her eyes flickered to the patches of grass that Hades had burned with his footsteps.

Persephone tried lots of different kinds of plants, but getting anything to flower, let alone bear fruit, was a trial. Without the seasons to guide her, it was difficult to know what she ought to be doing when, or if it even mattered. If she were not goddess of verdure, she doubted she could have brought anything from the soil at all, but her mother’s gifts were good for something. She could not, however, conjure chthonic honeybees (even if she could picture such a thing) from nothing. She needed some help.

“Hhhhhgggnnnnhhh,” Charon said apologetically as the shades disembarked from his ferry in the Pool of Styx. He shook his head and held up his hand; he couldn’t take her on a boat ride. She had overheard Nyx asking him to stop for the time being – in the wake of the Sisyphus disaster.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I was just wondering if you happen to have a… certain item… that I might be allowed to purchase from you.”

He said, “Hhhhaaaaaahhhh,” in an affirmative sort of way, and then he pushed off the steps with his oar. He pointed in the direction of the East Wing, and she thought she understood.

Sure enough, he pulled up below the courtyard that was behind her bedroom later that night (or day). He had brought several items with him to offer to her, little trinkets and gemstones and even what she thought might be mortal food. Shades drifted towards him with meagre offerings, and he swung his oar through them to get them to back off, frustrated.

“I need nectar,” she said. “Could you get some?”

He tilted his head at her. “Rrrrrrrnnnn?”

“It’s for the garden,” she answered, and she didn’t know why precisely Charon’s question threaded laughter through her words. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning to usurp Dionysus.”

“Hhhhhhrrrrrggghhhh,” he said, and the purple smoke curled into a figure: 100.

“100 obols for one bottle?” she frowned. “Really?”

He nodded.

“You can’t give me a loan?”

He shook his head.

She sighed. “Well, I’ll let you know when I have the funds, I suppose.”

By the time the first flowers were blooming, Persephone was nowhere close to collecting the coin she needed to purchase a bottle of nectar. She preserved the flowers instead, deadheading some, at least livening up the garden while she saved. She took a cutting from the yarrow, which had turned out a lovely pink colour, and sat on the steps of the Pool of Styx to wait for Charon. He was what spurred her into starting the garden, after all; it only seemed right.

He pulled up in his boat and let the shades file off, waking up Hypnos in the process. Charon held up his hand and shook his head again when she stood, and prepared to push off with his oar, but she took hold of the boat’s bow and leaned over to place the flowers behind his ear.

“Uuhhhrrrrrnnnnhh,” he said, tilting his head, and his eye was flickering ever so slightly, like a star in the night sky.

“Safe travels,” she told him, releasing his ferry, and he pushed off with a parting groan.

Later that day (or night) she heard a whistle from the courtyard, but almost didn’t believe it was Hermes until she leaned over the balustrade to see him again, standing in front of the gates and grinning up at her. “I come bearing gifts,” he announced, his sandals fluttering to take him up to her eye level.

Surely Hades had not sent her more seeds after what had happened with Sisyphus. Even with Hypnos’ generous interpretation of the pact she had signed, he couldn’t be seen actively aiding Persephone’s gardening efforts by sending her seeds. She was about to voice at least some of this to Hermes, but then he produced a bottle full of radiant golden nectar. “You must’ve saved up quite a bit to afford this,” he remarked. “Charon doesn’t sell it cheap.”

“But I didn’t—This isn’t—” she started, not knowing where to go with either sentence. She was still a ways off her goal, and Charon had told her he only accepted upfront payments, in full. Everyone knew the boatman only accepted obols, that trying to bribe him with anything else was as pointless as asking a river to stop flowing. She hadn’t been _trying_ to bribe him, she had only wanted to do something nice for someone who had showed her kindness.

But she had her nectar, and she got started with it straight away. It was only a theory, a shot in the dark really, and she was sure it would sound quite absurd to anyone else, so she didn’t ask anyone. But soon enough, the flowers she daubed nectar on attracted pollinators. At first it was a kind of beetle that she had seen scurrying around the House before. Then the strange, unsettling chthonic wasps and ants that Tartarus crawled with. Eventually, even Elysian moths were drawn to the garden, and although it didn’t quite have the ecosystem of a garden on the surface, it did come alive. Naturally, this did draw some attention.

“Persephone,” Hades said. “Am I to take it there is a reason you have infested my House with all manner of insects—some of which,” he added, “have been drawn away from their functions in my Underworld?”

She steeled herself. “Pollination, Lord Hades. If I am to grow food as you stipulated, I need insects to pollinate the flowers that grow from the seeds that—the seeds that I have.”

“I see. Could you grow things that… do _not_ require this process?”

“Some, sir. If I had root vegetables or tubers to grow.”

“Noted,” he said. “You are dismissed.” At least her next package from Hermes was not a surprise.

There was some kind of rot affecting her plants. It didn’t resemble anything she had seen on the surface, which she supposed made sense. If there were chthonic wasps pollinating her plants, then perhaps there were chthonic fungi migrating into the House. Whatever the case, the rot was climbing all over her verdure, and she was _angry_ about it. This was her domain, this plot of Underworld dirt nestled in the House of Hades was _her_ domain, and it was being invaded. She could manage a few leaf spots, but if the rot went all the way down to the roots, she would have to tear up large chunks of the garden and start again. She would manage that, too. But she wouldn’t be happy about it.

She got to work. Almost all of the fruit-bearing plants were affected. She had had high hopes for the gooseberries, growing in numbers on the branches, but with every tree she found infected, her heart sunk lower. All of the figs were eliminated, and although the soon-to-be-blackberries seemed alright for now, there seemed to be something creeping up the wall trellises. All but one of the pomegranate trees had to be torn up, and it was bloody work.

Nyx’s presence in the garden was, it turned out, very distinct from Hades’. While he cast shadows, she deepened them, intensified them. She said, “Lady Persephone.”

“Lady Nyx,” she answered. She was about two thirds through tearing out the infected hostas, and her hands were scratched and sore with blisters. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Her voice was far from polite, bordering on open frustration, and the knowledge that Nyx had every right to punish her for her tone seemed distant and irrelevant.

“You have not left the garden in some time.”

Acidity in the soil, bitterness on her tongue. “Is there something in my contract that forbids that?”

“No,” she said, her brow furrowed, and Persephone felt a pang of guilt. This wasn’t Nyx’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s. And taking it out on those who had been kind to her achieved nothing.

She sat back on her behind and pushed her hair back when it fell in front of her face. Exhaustion overwhelmed her all of a sudden, the weight of hours – days? nights? – of work bearing down on her. She took a breath to apologise to Nyx, but instead a sob broke out of her chest. It caught her by surprise, and she wasn’t able to stop the next two before she could bite down on her knuckle and stifle the noise. The pressure ramped up inside her chest when she did.

The Lady of Night did not emote strongly, but that only meant that the note of alarm in her voice when she said, “Persephone?” was all the more pronounced to her ears.

Fat tears rolled down her cheeks. She didn’t even know why she was crying. It was like she was a cloud that didn’t notice itself getting slowly heavier and darker until it was forced to release a torrential downpour.

Nyx knelt beside her, and placed a tentatively reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I will see what I can do about your contract. The Administration Chamber—”

“No!” she exclaimed. She tried to wipe the tears from her eyes, but they were instantly replaced. “No. Please, don’t.”

She took her hand back, frowning. “You are not unhappy with your station in the House?”

She shook her head. How could she be? It was more than she had ever asked for, more than she had ever expected. It was gloomy, true, but even sunshine was gloomy when she was in her mother’s shadow. If Demeter found out where she had been, she would never let her out of her sight again. She couldn’t bear the thought of returning to Olympus now.

“Then, forgive me, Lady Persephone, but I do not understand…”

…It was just that at the moment, she couldn’t bear the thought of remaining in the Underworld for eternity, either.

“It’s nothing. Please don’t tell Hades about this.” The very thought of it mortified her, brought heat to her cheeks.

“Of… course,” she said with a frown indicating she still did not understand in the slightest. Nevertheless, she said, “Do not worry, I will say nothing of this to him.”

“I… I should get back to work. I have lots to do.” She started to push off the ground with her hands.

“No. I think you will rest for now.” Before she could protest, Nyx swept her into her arms, and gentle darkness enveloped her. When her eyes adjusted, she found herself blinking with heavy eyelids at the ceiling of her bedroom. She felt Nyx’s presence start to recede, and reached out to try and bring her back, but she could not be touched in this form, could not be held. The endless Night pressed a kiss to her forehead, and said, “Sweet dreams, Persephone.”

She rose out of sleep naturally, and touched her fingers to her forehead as she recalled the feeling that had sent her to the Land of Dream. There was a basin of warm water waiting for her to wash her face and hands in, and clean clothes laid out on the recliner. She felt fresher stepping out of her chambers than she had in some time, maybe since stepping into the first sun of a crisp spring dawn.

Hypnos shook awake from where he was floating at the entrance to her room. When he spotted her, he smiled through his yawn and stretched. “Ahhh, morning!”

“Is it?” she asked.

“I’m just waking up, and you’re just waking up, so why not?” he shrugged cheerily. “How did you sleep?”

“Very well, Hypnos. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He gave her what she thought was supposed to be a wink, but was really just a pronounced and slightly asynchronous blink. “Well, my work here is done.”

“But you didn’t do anything,” she smiled confusedly, but he was already drifting back to his post by the Pool of Styx, where he had taken up a near-permanent residence.

The garden was in better shape than Persephone had feared when she returned to it. Most of the fruit trees were goners, but the lily of the valley, the ruby giants, the bleeding hearts, the pulmonaria – they were all alright, and the Underworld would have to try harder than some silly rot to destroy the creeping phlox that was clinging viciously to the east wall.

She was culling the affected branches of one of the pomegranate trees when she found a blossom nestled in a living part of the plant. It was not shrivelled or greying, and it was more open than the others, redder. She inspected it all over, and found no faults. “You really want to live, don’t you?” she said softly.

The pomegranate became her focus. She had taken on too much too quickly, expanded the garden without understanding enough of the Underworld and then tried to uproot everything rotten at once. She had all the time she could possibly ask for, so this time she would take it. Ascalaphus brought an urn of water from the Acheron, and she maintained the plants that she still had, but she stopped planting for a while. Her power as a goddess of verdure was stunted here – or, not stunted, exactly. Just different. It flowed through the plant life in the Underworld differently to how it flowed on the surface. There was a chthonic taste to it that made everything seem… more distant. Less pronounced. She was confident she would tune into it with practice.

In the meantime, she had one round, ripe pomegranate she was exceedingly proud of. She made an appointment with Hades and placed it on his desk, then stepped back and bowed. “I present before you the spoils of your realm, Lord Hades, nurtured by my hand.”

She felt his gaze bearing down on her, and fought a flush on her cheeks. “Is that everything, Lady Persephone?” Hades asked.

She wished that she wasn’t doing this in front of the whole Great Hall. The shades had their own jobs to get on with, but she felt distinctly exposed. “Yes, my King.”

“Very good. You are dismissed.” Although it was a relief to have his attention eased off her, she felt a pang of disappointment. She should not expect special treatment, she _did not_ expect special treatment, but to be disregarded as every other shade was disheartening at the same time as it was a comfort.

So her heart began to race when a shade found her in her garden and told her that the King of the Dead wanted to see her in his private chambers. She was in her gardening clothes, and unthinkingly had wiped her dirty hands on her dress when she stood up. The braid she’d tied her hair into that morning (or evening?) had drastically escaped its shape and the loose hairs were clinging to the sweat on her neck and forehead. Ought she change, make herself presentable, or was it worse to make him wait? The shade who delivered the message had flitted away almost immediately, turning their payment over in their hands. It was a rather beautiful gem, valuable enough that it probably ensured discretion as well as expedience.

She settled for washing her hands and retying her hair into a twist bun. She knocked on the huge doors of the King’s chambers, and was commanded to enter. When she did, she saw him sitting at a round desk just as laden with parchment as his other. He had his right hand resting on his face, as it had when he had considered what to do with her in the wake of the Sisyphus disaster – but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at her pomegranate, sat on the desk in front of him.

“You wanted to see me, Lord Hades?” she asked, and felt a chill in her bones when only his eyes flicked up to regard her.

It took her a moment to realise what was strange about the motion, though. He wasn’t elevated in his throne, so his eyes were level with her – but it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t an optical illusion. He was physically smaller. Still taller than any mortal, but he was scaled down, so that the pomegranate would fit in his palm like an apple in hers. “I don’t know how to eat this,” he said.

Some combination of those words and the fact she was still processing his size meant that the only response she could give him was, “…What?”

“Will you show me?” he asked gruffly, and pushed the fruit towards her.

She blinked, and when she shook that off, she approached the desk. “Um… you need a knife.”

He huffed and rose to his feet to rifle through a chest, at which point it became undeniable that he was shorter than usual. His chair was made for someone of his current size, so this wasn’t wholly for her benefit, clearly. She did her best to suppress her questions of why he would go to the trouble of changing his shape in private. He returned to the desk and placed a hunting knife down, with the handle towards Persephone, and watched her slice it open.

“And then you scoop out the seeds and eat them,” she said.

“Hm,” he said appreciatively, admiring the red shine of the seeds as he might a trove of jewels. “Would you share it with me?”

“My Lord?”

“It is your first harvest in the Underworld. I would share it with you. That is, if you like.”

“I…” she blinked. She offered a smile that she doubted she kept the confusion out of, but said, “Of course.” She wondered if this was leading up to something, if he was trying to put her at ease. But he asked nothing of her that a king might ask of someone he invited into his chambers; when they finished the pomegranate, he thanked her and let her go. She returned to her garden more confused about her status in the House than she had been to begin with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one comes courtesy of “Knowing you, you probably tricked her into signing a pact to come join you, or something.” “Hah! Surprisingly not distant from the truth.” We learn afterwards that Zeus arranged Persephone’s abscondence to the Underworld, so what exactly did Hades “trick” her into signing? This is my answer! Also, Hypnos totally was working posted outside Persephone’s room. It’s just tough for other gods to understand he does some of his best work while asleep.


End file.
